Long Gone by Alafair Burke

Author:Alafair Burke [Burke, Alafair]
Language: eng
Format: azw, epub, mobi
Tags: Sample Book
Publisher: Harper Collins, Inc.
Published: 2011-06-21T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Two

Becca Stevenson had a secret.

Two secrets, really, tied together by the shiny gadget held between her fingertips.

C’mon. Just a little peek. I won’t tell anyone.

She’d read those words over and over again. Only a minute or two had passed since they’d first appeared on the screen, but the stillness felt like an eternity. Not that there was actual stillness. She heard the New Jersey Transit guy announce, once again, the delay of the train arriving from Hackettstown. Heard the toddler on the next bench pester his mother for more Goldfish crackers. Heard the woman across from her “whispering” into her cell phone, insisting that the person on the other end of the line explain why he hadn’t picked up last night, even though she hit redial until two in the morning.

But despite the noise of the train station, Becca felt stillness. In her head. In her hands. In her heart. She and Dan had been texting for nearly two weeks now, and they had developed a quick rhythm, responding to one another within a few seconds. Or, at least, she responded within a few seconds. So did he, usually. But like any conversation, even the best ones, their back-and-forths had to stop sometime. There had been occasions when she was tempted to be the one who cut off the banter—maybe politely, with a “gotta go” or “bye for now”—but it was always Dan who called it quits, suddenly falling quiet without warning. But he always came back, to her initial surprise and now delight.

She hadn’t deleted a single entry. Their list of messages, cataloged in neat little green and white boxes of text, numbered well into the hundreds. Sometimes at night in her bed, she would scroll up to the very beginning and relive the entirety of their printed relationship on the backlit screen.

There had been so many sweet and funny and clever moments in their clipped exchanges, but probably no single message was as exciting as that first pop-up on her screen. The first text message she had ever received, just two days after pocketing her secret toy.

Sophie gave me your number. Do you mind? You seem fun. P.S. This is Dan Hunter.

Dan Hunter? Dan Fucking Hunter was texting Becca Stevenson? She’d been watching him silently since the seventh grade, when he was the first kid to download My Chemical Romance on his iPod. He’d been cute and funny even then. Now he was a jock who had dated three different cheerleaders, but she always sensed that he had another side to him. He listened to eighties punk music. Wore a lot of black, at least for a basketball player. And he was one of the first guys in school to get a tattoo. The fact that he was interested in her just proved he hid a little “alt” in him.

When he first contacted her, she didn’t know what to think or feel, let alone say. She’d finally opted for casual and a little cool.

No problem. Sophie’s my girl.

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